


The Shadow of Your Heart

by champagneboyband



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: M/M, Reincarnation, also, homer is a minor character in this, i mean not really bc you don't actually see it happen but like...., idk you'll see, okay now im going to go write a uni au where everyone's happy and no one dies, reunited and it feels so goooood, sort of character death?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3539453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/champagneboyband/pseuds/champagneboyband
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I feel my breath catch in my throat when he reaches a hand out, tentative, and wraps loose fingers around my ankle where it rests near his head. A sharp shock of recognition runs through me, and my skin feels electric with it. I've known these hands before, I'm sure of it.</i>
</p><p>According to Greek mythology, five rivers run through the Underworld: Styx (the river of hatred), Acheron (the river of sorrow), Cocytus (the river of lamentation), Phlegethon (the river of fire), and Lethe (the river of forgetfulness). Those who wish to live again may be reincarnated, but not before they drink from the water of Lethe, erasing all traces of their past lives and selves.</p><p>Reincarnation AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadow of Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo this was originally supposed to be a lot longer than this. But then it got sort of depressing and I realized I wanted to write a happy-ending college/university AU instead. So instead of just junking this draft, I thought I'd post what I finished? Okay now I'm going to go write a happy college AU where no one dies and everyone's in love and things are great because there are already way too many tears in TSOA. 
> 
> Title from “Cosmic Love” by Florence and the Machine
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [champagneboyband](http://champagneboyband.tumblr.com) :)

_Had she really thought I would not know him? I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world._

—

The water flows lazily through the jagged countryside in the valley of Smyrna along the river Meles in Lydia. In summer, I race other village boys along its banks, tripping over rocks and laughing as we fall, splashing, into its cool depths. The sun beats down harsh and blistering during the long afternoons, and we stop to rest by its edges, peeling off sandals and tunics, laughter carried over fields by the gentle breeze. It is a good childhood, my father a blacksmith in town and my mother always prepared with ripe figs plucked from the heavy fruit trees that surround our home.

It is in this place that I am first reborn, some four hundred years after the fall of Troy.

I do not have an overabundance of friends, just the boys who live in the town around me, but the size of our village steadily grows and, with it, so does my circle. I am well-liked among the boys of Smyrna because, even as a child, I am always prepared with a story. On long nights, when our parents sit around their hearths and discuss business or the matters of the day or tell stories of their own, we sneak away to splash through the waters of the river under the sparkling stars amid the endless croaking of frogs.

 _Tell us a story_ , one of them will inevitably beg. _Tell us the one about the boats_.

I don't know where my stories come from. They seem to spring from some deep place within me, fully formed, as if my mind holds much more than the normal things of a fourteen year old life. The words come to me as if pulled in on the very wind itself, and I like telling them, because I enjoy the glow that burns in my chest as I speak of distant battles and the clashing of gods. My mother says I have been gifted by the Muses. My father thinks it is Apollo's doing. I am too young to know much of the gods, but I know that there's something in the way the words flow from me, rhythmic and warm, like the slow pump of blood through my veins. Wherever they are from, I know that my stories live in my heart.

It is on one such night, when the moon is full and round in the sky and the cicadas are buzzing in the reeds, when a new boy joins our group. My people don't ordinarily take kindly to strangers. No Greeks do; each city is its own community, and travelers from far-off places are seen as foreigners, not to be trusted. But Smyrna has been changing in the last several years, growing larger by the day it seems, and taking on new families all the time. The adults are suspicious still, and they sit late into the night with the newcomers, quizzing them by firelight and digging deep into their pasts. They want to be sure that these strangers have not angered the gods in some way. They want to be sure they will not bring misery into our lives.

As children, though, we have not yet learned to be suspicious. We are at an age when any boy who can run and jump and laugh is a fast friend. Any boy who can keep up with our games, we accept into the fold unconditionally.

This boy has only been here for several hours, and he hasn't yet had the chance to prove himself to us, but we allow him to follow along nonetheless. Perhaps there is some pity involved in our decision; if we leave him behind, he will be left with our parents, forced to sit through hours of conversation that he doesn't understand.

I don't particularly mind him coming along. There's something about this boy that I can't quite explain. His eyes flash blue in the moonlight and his hair falls in tight brown curls, bright smile hopeful as he trudges along with us on our way to the river bank.

“Where are you from?” one of the boys, Tigranes, asks as we pick our way over familiar rocks.

“Ephesus,” the new boy answers, jumping a boulder effortlessly, landing lightly in the packed sand that makes the beach at the edge of the water. “My father is a bricklayer, and he heard there's work here with the city growing so quickly.”

“But it's not a city,” I say, letting myself drop down after him. Despite having walked these rocks my entire life, he moves over them with much more grace. “Smyrna is only a town. We barely have a marketplace.”

“It's growing,” he says again, nodding to himself. “That's what my father says.”

“And do you always believe everything your father says?” I ask, eyebrow arching toward my hairline. Some of the boys stare, because I'm not ordinarily so bold. I don't know why I said it. “What's your name?”

“Acacius,” he answers, but the word sounds wrong, somehow, coming from his lips. He holds my gaze, and I feel a warmth building in my chest. I look away. “And yours?”

“I'm...my name is Pelagius,” I say, and I frown to myself. That same strangeness, the name feels odd rolling out of my mouth. It's the name I was born with, but it suddenly doesn't feel as though it belongs to me at all.

“Pelagius tells the best stories,” Tigranes says eagerly, oblivious to the confusion in my voice. He's much younger than us, only nine where the rest of us are nearly men. “He promised that he would tell the one about the palace by the sea.”

“Did he?” Acacius asks, eyes still fixed on me. I glance up to find him watching me, and I feel my face heat, but don't look away this time. “Whose palace was it?”

“The prince Achilles,” I say as he drops himself down to lay on the river bank, arms behind his head. His back goes stiff at my words, and he rolls his head to one side so he can peer up at me where I sit with my back to a boulder.

“In Phithia,” he says in a quiet voice.

I feel my forehead wrinkle in a frown, and we stare at each other for a very long moment. He shouldn't know that, has never heard my stories before. I feel something bright blooming in my mind which I can't quite explain, and my heart beats out a staccato rhythm in my chest. The night seems to take on a new softness as I watch his eyes glow with a deep warmth, and I feel as though there's something intensely personal in his stare, something familiar. I feel my breath catch in my throat when he reaches a hand out, tentative, and wraps loose fingers around my ankle where it rests near his head. A sharp shock of recognition runs through me, and my skin feels electric with it. I've known these hands before, I'm sure of it.

“Are you going to tell the story or not?” Tigranes asks then, and I jump. I'd forgotten the others were there.

—

Tigranes is taken one night in our sixteenth year by a gang of passing bandits, and we hear no more of him. It isn't until many years later, when I'm living a different life entirely, that I will read of how he changed his name to Homer, _homeris_ , hostage.

—

The next time I meet him – for it _is_ him – I'm in Elis for the start of the 64 th Olympiad.

It's a strange experience, seeing him again. He doesn't look the same, just as he did not look like himself in Smyrna, but I know him immediately nonetheless. It would be difficult to mistake him for anyone else, the way he outstrips all the other runners while barely breaking a sweat, but that's not the thing that makes me recognize him. Not that, but rather a stirring within me the moment we cross paths. I feel as though something inside me, in some deep place, awakens, and I simply know.

It happens as I'm crossing a street, head down as I attempt to keep pace with my master. I am a slave in this life, born to a poor family from Corinth who had no choice but to sell me and my two sisters in order to feed the other three. I was the youngest brother, not worth much in terms of work or inheritance, but the price of my sale was able to put food on the table to feed five mouths for a year. I don't resent them for it, but accept that they did what was necessary.

I was first sold to a shop owner, because I was too young and unbroken to do much else, and I spent my childhood keeping his books. I always did have a mind for figures. I've spent the last three years since then pulling rows on a merchant ship, crossing the sea in what's seemed like an endless trek. The trading company I belonged to has recently lost money, however, and now I have been brought here, to be sold at auction to the highest bidder. I hope that the man who buys me will know the value of a slave who can read.

I'm caught in these thoughts when I hear his shout.

“Stop!”

The cry pierces through me, and I jerk my head around, heart beating wildly in my throat. The chains around my wrists clatter and jerk when my master notices that I'm no longer walking, but I resist, arms strong enough to hold my ground after so many years spent rowing. My eyes search the thick crowd frantically, neck craning in every direction. I know it was him. I would know his voice anywhere, in any life.

“You, tradesman, I said _stop_ ,” the deep voice calls again, and I find him.

He's standing some thirty paces away, eyes fixed dead on my face, and I know instantly that this is Achilles. His skin is of the deepest brown, eyes black as night, and his once-golden hair is now short and wiry against his head, but it's him. Unquestionably, it is him.

I don't know what it is that makes my master listen. Perhaps it's the olive wreath crowning his head and marking him a winner of the Games or the note of authority and insistence in his voice, or maybe it's the power that fizzles just under his surface, the remnants of godhood still clinging on within him. Whatever the reason, the man holding my chains watches with wide eyes as Achilles crosses the street to stand in front of us. His gaze is still fixed on me, and he stares with a fascination and wonder that matches my own, mouth hanging slightly open.

“Are you alright?” he asks after a long moment of silence, eyes searching my face, voice so soft and gentle that it nearly breaks my heart to hear it. “Are you...has he hurt you at all?”

I shake my head minutely, mouth opening and closing silently, still paralyzed by the deafening scream in my head, the repeated shout of his name, over and over. _Achilles_.

“I apologize if I have offended you in any way, sir,” my master says formally, bowing his head. “I was simply taking the slave to market. We will be out of your way as quickly as possible.”

Achilles holds a hand out to catch the man around the chest as he jerks my chains and attempts to pull me along.

“I'll take him,” he says, tearing his eyes away from my face to look at the trader. “However much you want, I can double it. I'll take him. Now.”

The master raises his eyebrows in surprise. It's unconventional, making a sale in the middle of a street like this, away from the auction blocks. But it's not forbidden, and the tradesman has been instructed to fetch as high of a price as he can. In the end, Achilles pays much more than my worth, handing over a leather pouch heavy with gold coins, a sum that could have bought me four times over. The master releases me from my chains, and Achilles places a hand low on my back immediately, pressing and insistent.

“Follow me,” he says into my ear, lips forming the words in our old language. Somehow I understand him, though I've never spoken it before in this life. “Hurry.”

He leads me through the crowd with quick ease, fingers digging into the divots of my spine, and I follow. I have always followed, wherever he has led me. We step into an alleyway, and he wheels me around to face him, eyes searching my face desperately.

“It is you, isn't it?” he asks then, voice so quiet I can barely hear him over the rush in my ears. “Tell me that you know me.”

“Achilles.”

His face crumples, and he pulls me against his chest, and I cling to him, heart beating out a wild rhythm in my chest.

“I didn't – I didn't know who I was,” he whispers then, arms still cinched around me in a breathless, clutching embrace. “I didn't know, and then I _saw_ you, and it just...”

His voice breaks, and he can't continue, but he doesn't have to. I know. I know it because I feel it too. I have lived the whole of this life not knowing who I was, feeling hollowed out but never knowing why. The ecstasy that wells up in me now at the strong frame of him in my arms, solid and real, feels like the emptiness of centuries suddenly spilling over, golden light streaming into a darkened room.

“It wasn't like in Smyrna,” I say, hands fisted in the thin material of his tunic. “I recognized your voice, even before I saw you.”

He pulls back, hand resting low on the base of my neck, fingers threaded up through my hair. He's taller than me now, much taller, and I feel almost like a small child as I crane my neck back to look up at him. His thumb skims over my cheek bone, delicate, almost as if he's afraid to move too suddenly.

“You remember Smyrna, then,” he says, words laced with wonder.

“I didn't,” I tell him honestly. “Until now. Now it feels as though I never forgot.”

I don't know how I could have forgotten that place, the life we built with each other there, the joy we shared and the long years together. He'd won his glory in Troy, and though I would have followed him to the very ends of the earth if he had asked me to, he was happy to stay in the city. He'd been right, back then; Smyrna did grow over the years. We were only forty when I lost him to a fever, so commonplace that it almost did not seem real, and the grief that overcame me then was enough to see me following him not long after. Memories are flooding back into my mind as I stand in the dim alleyway, visions of the long nights we spent wrapped in each other, and I feel the hot sting of tears threatening to well up inside me.

Tears of sadness at the ancient pang of loss, tears of relief at having him with me again.

“How is this possible?” he asks. “How do I know you? Patroclus...”

A shiver runs up my spine when he says my name, and I suddenly don't care how it is that we recognize each other so easily. It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters to me now, in this moment, is that we do.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Also, if you're interested, here's an [outtake](http://champagneboyband.tumblr.com/post/113264931598/patrochilles-fic-preview-because-im-a-cruel-but) that was originally supposed to come toward the end of this fic. :)


End file.
